As of today, brain surgeries remain complex and risky. Conventional open skull surgery is traumatic, may have debilitating side effects to the patient and generally requires long recovery time. The time taken to perform the surgery may be tedious and decreases the efficiency of the medical staff. The complexity of the operations often prevents repeatability if required. The operation itself may cause a brain-shift, and for operations such as tumor resection, the original position of the tumor may be dislocated so that pre-operative planning may no longer be accurate intraoperatively.
There therefore exists a need for a minimally-invasive and automated procedure, which overcomes at least some of the disadvantages of prior art procedures, in particular, in avoiding major trauma to the brain in areas other than that to be operated on, and in doing so, avoiding significant brain-shift, such that the pre-operative planning is still valid intra-operatively.
The disclosures of each of the publications mentioned in this specification, are hereby incorporated by reference, each in its entirety.